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By Doug Collins

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: Climate change is a huge concern in 2023

Dec 30, 2022 | 5:30 AM

ASIDE FROM SO MANY issues facing us in the year ahead, climate change must be kept near the top of the list.

So many of us see the effects of this change, but because there are so many issues like health care and the economy, we tend not to put it at the top of our list of concerns.

And many put all the climate events into a single basket, claiming these are cyclical events that happen every so often, and things will eventually return to normal.

They won’t. And they won’t because we fail to recognize the signs that indicate there is a “new normal” that we are going to have to deal with.

The snowfalls are getting more severe, hurricanes are getting stronger and bringing more destruction, droughts are lasting longer, more flooding, bigger wildfires, and the list goes on.

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Time magazine had an interesting article this past week describing some of the new words to describe these serious occurrences. Words like “bomb cyclone”, “polar vortex”, “firenado”, and a number of others, none of them representing a positive event.

Along with this, an overall rise in the world’s temperature, rising ocean levels, more explosive wildfires and so on give us real cause for concern.

There was a report last week that the increasing severity of winter storms will have a major impact on how we approach snow-clearing.

Similarly, increased flooding will continue to impact how we plan to control sudden rushes of water. And that doesn’t deal with protection against wildfires.

These items will cost billions of dollars to implement and must be factored in with costs to deal with health care, supported housing and community safety.

A tough juggling act for government but climate change is huge, and simply cannot be ignored.

I’m Doug Collins and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.